If you don't live in Las Vegas, or spend time exploring it if you visit, then your general impression of the place is probably of a brilliantly-lit, tacky, upside-down, glitzy, loud town springing up in the middle of a vast desert. Apparently though, there's life beyond the casinos and the massive hotels and the drive-thru wedding chapels and Tom Jones. How much life? According to bassist Mark Stoermer and guitarist David Keuning, not very much. But there is enough to launch at least one exciting rock band out of the scene there : The Killers.

I joined up with the two backstage just after soundcheck at Richards in Vancouver, as they prepared themselves for the show with sodas and peanut butter sandwiches. When I mention that the general perception of Las Vegas by those who don't reside there doesn't include a vibrant rock scene, it gets them talking. I ask if there's much of a scene behind the scenes. "Kind of but not much," says Stoermer. "There's the strip… and the strip malls. There's not much urban life or a lot of culture. But there's still, I mean, in the city there's a million people living there, and there are some people who are into good music. And I think we were the rare few that were into the stuff that we liked… There's maybe a few hundred people in Vegas who are into this stuff and then only ten of those are musicians and four of them are in this band."

Keuning tells me what the rest of the Las Vegas musicians are up to. "Everyone else is in like a singles band. They play the most generic music… It's weird you know, like we were saying - if you try and do something really original and you try to play in bars, hardly anyone will show up, you won't get paid anything, so a lot of them just give up and be like, 'well, I could make a thousand dollars a week playing Neil Diamond covers in the casinos and actually make decent money…' They'll never write a song ever, but that's what a lot of people do. They just give up and do that." Stoermer throws in another thought on the lack of good musicians. "So the ones left over for the original bands are usually bottom of the barrel because… it's like you have those two extremes. Either good musicians who just want to make money or the ones who try… but don't have a chance."

In the face of such a challenging city to break, the one shiny point is that, with so few musicians to root through, and so few bands to compete with, the members of The Killers were bound to run into one another, and bound to get some sort of attention eventually. "I think the scene, the small scene we did have kind of almost developed around us. We started playing different places that didn't have any of the other bands that were playing in Vegas and we had a group of kids that would come to see us and it built up slowly and… well it kind of happened fast. We would always be playing to pretty good crowds in Vegas which is rare for any Vegas band," says Stoermer.

Doing their own thing in that environment was still tricky, so the only logical thing would be to hit up another terribly-influential market to start the ball rolling, and maybe Vegas would follow suit more closely afterwards. The sequence of events wasn't mapped out per se, but by chance, The Killers got signed to Lizard King in the UK well before America caught on. Stoermer explains that the band's manager had shopped the demo around, and a copy happened to land with Lizard King. "…And then they gave us a call. And once the Lizard King thing started happening, they started playing "Mr. Brightside" on the radio over there and we started to be in NME, and immediately American labels were interested. And now this is our first North American tour." Kind of a ridiculous notion to only just have one North American tour after already having criss-crossed the UK. And not even headlining yet. The Vancouver date was near the end of a 45-date tour with stellastarr*, whom The Killers had also done a number of shows with in the UK just before. The work ethic is amazing, and the payoff is starting to happen in North America finally, partially due to the aforementioned NME (musical trend-setters…) coverage and the fact that they've been on the road since February. Talk show appearances and dates with Morrissey in San Francisco have been rolling around, much to their delight. "Yeah. It's an honour [to play with Morrissey]," says Keuning. Stoermer adds, "We're all big fans. Especially [singer] Brandon [Flowers]. He's Brandon's idol."

Having now been through both the UK and the US, the guys weigh in on the ways in which the band has been received in both places. "There's differences. We're more known there [in the UK] and the first time we went over there we were already getting some radio play and the excitement was a little quicker," says Stoermer. "But I'd still say overall it's gone well. It's just the enthusiasm's a little more over there. But we'll see. Maybe things will change." Keuning says, "Yeah I think theyre a little more accepting of new bands than here. Like if you play here, you gotta prove yourself. But in the UK they give you a chance right away."

On the topic, we discuss the 'hype factor.' Being defined automatically as the latest in cool by being mentioned by the almighty NME, it might prove difficult to live up to North America's expectations. Stoermer says, "I don't know what to expect at this point… It's our first tour and we're opening and [the hype] could turn out to be a hindrance in the future but I don't think so because, either way you look at it, the album stands on its own legs. But you have to live up to the hype and I think we can. I'm not scared of it." Press isn't a big issue for them either right now. Stoermer continues, "We don't see it at all. Sometimes we get surprises, like 'did you hear that so-and-so magazine printed this?' We didn't know, but we don't look."

The agenda with their music isn't set in stone either. They cover a variety of emotions and refuse to be stapled into one specific mood. Keuning explains succinctly, "Hopefully [the listeners] will dance and then cry." While the comment was stated in a humourous tone, the idea behind it was genuine. "We want to have some dance songs, some rock songs, some stuff that is uh… we can be kinda deep sometimes when we wanna be," he continues. Stoermer carries on with the description of the band's aim. "I think we want to cover the whole spectrum of what you just said, which not many bands do, but I think the Beatles did that. And maybe the Stones too, and even though that's setting the bar really high, that's kind of what we're doing, you know… not being stuck to one thing. It doesn't always have to be serious but you don't always have to be just entertainment for entertainment's sake either. It's good to have it all."

Their new-wave-tinged sound fits well with the 'in' music these days, which could be a contributing factor to some of their more recent attention. The influence has long since been with some of them in some form. Stoermer explains, "Maybe not as individuals [having had the new wave vibe in their music], but to be fair, Brandon has always had that in his… this is his second band ever and his band before this [Blush Response] was even more 80's-ish. Me, Dave and [drummer] Ronnie [Vannucci] have done other things, but The Killers as a whole have always had that flavour in there, but that said, we still have a lot more influences and I think that comes through too, and people are focusing on that now, maybe more like what you're saying, the whole hype thing too."

When asked about where they aim to go from here, Stoermer says, "I think we want to get to the point where we're a headliner and hopefully we're not far from that. Yeah that's the next step I guess. To be playing shows where people came to see us, and know the album [titled Hot Fuss] and that will have to be after June sometime."

Keuning finishes, "Well, the album comes out in June. And I guess we're just hoping it will do well."

So do we. There's more to Las Vegas than you ever dreamed.

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Photos : Andy Scheffler
Published : June 23, 2004.